Fujito Ruined The Game!

It will take a year to R30 a single full set of armor so that's like.. Three jobs at ML50!

Fun design.

The whole odyssey moogle mastery system that was supposed to make the content more approachable for solo play is a parody.
It takes so long to upgrade that even REMA grind pales in comparison.
Then there are the solo dong blocks sprinkled in like some NMs (Kuk, Taniwha, Gloios and what ever C throws at you) that can't be soloed or only on very specific niche jobs. Don't get me started on the coffers and gold chests or the 3 jobs system for gaol.

You'll be long done with all unity upgrades you're after before getting any meaningful MM progress and even after this long grind it only opens up a tiny part of gaol for solo clears.

Odyssey wasn't good for solo play, it had interesting basic approaches but completely failed at execution.

The amount of time/effort is a bit insane atm.
It was the same for Odyssey RP (and initially it was capped at R15...) but then they released the Amplifiers, which worked even more in favour of players (and I doubt SE planned for that) with the "5% RP runs".
That made what would've been an insanely intense amount of grind, into something that's still intense but nowhere close to what it could've been.
This is just a pure, lucky coincidence. SE clearly didn't plan for that, but players found it, and SE was either too slow to react to the point they decided to leave it be, also because it was de facto "fixing" the issue without requiring any further work on their side.


Limbus is in a similar situation? Better than the pre-amplifier Odyssey I would say, but still very intense.
Will anything change in the future? I sure hope they're planning for something.
It's good having things to do in FFXI and not getting bored afk because you have "nothing to do". But too much is too much, between the "forced" daily logins, the amount of efforts to coordinate V25 kills in Odyssey, the amount of time spent to farm segments (unless you're one of the lucky ones like me who farmed enough already), the amount of time spent in daily >1hr in the walking simulator that is Sortie, which for an average group of 8bosses run it's tonna take you ~10 months to complete a weapon.

I mean... it's hard to balance things out, but it's easy going from one extreme "nothing to do" to the other "omg this is stressing me out, too many things to do at the same time I feel overwhelmed".

If anything, it's about time they should do some catch up campaigns for Odyssey, maybe soon for Sortie too.
Content has been out long enough to justify something of the sorts without making the "day one" pro players too angry about the noobs catching up to them, eventually.

The whole odyssey moogle mastery system, that was supposed to make the content more approachable for solo play, is a parody.
It takes so long to upgrade that even REMA grind pales in comparison.
Then there are the solo dong blocks sprinkled in like some NMs (Kuk, Taniwha, Gloios and what ever C throws at you) that can't be soloed or only on very specific niche jobs. Don't get me started on the coffers and gold chests or the 3 jobs system for gaol.

You'll be long done with all unity upgrades you're after before getting any meaningful MM progress and even after this long grind it only opens up a tiny part of gaol for solo clears.

Odyssey wasn't good for solo play, it had interesting basic approaches but completely failed at execution.

Balancing content so that only bleeding edge players can realistically complete it, while everyone else has no realistically attainable finish line, is terrible for player retention.

The argument that people will finish and unsub misses the point. That group is a minority, and designing around them actively harms motivation and engagement for the wider community and makes people who wait and see before resubbing less likely to even resub.

That's always been my feeling as well BUT are we sure?
Is it a bias of ours?
Does SE even have data they can use to discriminate between these different groups of people? Can they tell people who are "legitimately" playing together vs those who are multiboxing 6 accounts?
And if they can, do they even care to do it?

I'm not so sure things are as simple as they may seem at first glance.

I duoed to MM45 with a mule (GEO) except for a few Aurums in C. The NMs you named should be possible solo with trusts, but it will potentially be the only thing you do that run.

Odyssey was actually good content IMO, right up until they made the terrible RP point system for the armor sets. A is for solo, B/C for lowman, and Gaol for a full party. The problem was how long they had to stretch the Gaol content because they presumably didn't have funding to make the next content for us, which led to the horrible point system. On top of it, their weird point buildup design means you spend a ton of time just AFK when farming points, which makes it terribly boring.

Limbus obviously wasn't balanced so 'only bleeding edge players can complete it'. It's time consuming but easy and inclusive. Everyone gets the same rewards if they use their spins.

Odyssey was built from the ground up to be scalable so anyone could work through it at the level they could handle and progress(RP) still saves if you ever move onto higher levels. If you actually did V15s for RP before V20 was released, you cleared V20s a lot faster. You do need to group, but it's a MMO.. that's to be expected. You don't need an amazing group to clear V15s or V20s with gear that's now widely available like emp+2/3 and limbus armor.

"But Thorny, it would take sooooo long to do RP at v15 and then do it again at v25!" ... That's what all the 'cutting edge' players did, though. We capped our gear at each release so we'd be ready for the next one. It's even easier than that now, because you can just ride-along for V25 RP.

Same goes for Sortie. You don't need amazing gear to clear a downstairs boss with a few people, metals, and 1hrs. You can still get a stage 4 prime doing that, it'll just take ~6x longer than a group doing 9/9s.

It doesn't seem to me that SE is designing content for bleeding edge players. Everything has a slower and easier option. Seems more like people who are still playing a game that's never respected your time are upset the game doesn't respect their time. Add a side dose of being upset that having a coordinated group and better gear gets you more progress than soloing with trusts.

I said it already I'll say it again.
We'll never know for sure but I seriously doubt they specifically planned the tri-runs, the amplifiers and the 5% thing for that end.
It's just an "exploit" players found, and SE decided to let it survive.
I'm very very skeptic that was their plan to begin with.

Sorry but, what content is this referring to?

Odyssey: anyone who can fog a mirror can farm segments. People in ambu gear can clear v0, get ody gear, and clear v15 (at least)

Sortie: anyone can farm sortie. With a group of human beings above room temperature IQ, you can easily clear the majority of the bosses without intense gear or skill requirements.

Limbus: grindy, but easily soloable by anyone.

The only thing "locked" behind being an "elite" is faster achievement of your goals, or maybe v25 bosses in gaol. But that's not really locking much, is it? You still have like 95% of the content and gear available to you. I guess you could argue HM Aminon is "locked", but that's piss easy if you dedicate a whole run to it.

We're looking at two totally different games, brother.

I get your point and I agree to a certain extent, but I would say it's not true that SE never "respected their time".
Granted that's extremely arbitrary and subjective, it's quite clear how the game was more demanding back until the lv75 era (different times, different standards in the gaming world back then, many other different variables), it got much easier and "respectful" of your time during the Abyssea era, with a lot of complaints from the "pro" players of the era if you recall.
Then it started to get progressively a bit more hardcore with Voidwatch and Legion (but still miles away from the 75 era if you ask me) only to become way more accessible for during the adoulin era (not at launch) for many years after.

Up to the point in recent years where the game started being more "demanding" of your time and effort, but for different reasons.
They had to maximize the amount of time players were busy, while minimizing their time developing or adjusting stuff.
Which has always been true to a certain extent, but never as much as it has been over the last few years.

But overall yeah, I think you put the focus on the right stuff. It's mostly people being biased for the reason you emphasized.

When Sheol was released (March 2020):
Gaol/Segments (Jan 2021) didnt exist
neither did Sheol B (Jul 2020) and C (Sep 2020)

It was strictly to farm Lustreless Scales.


It had an even slower rollout than Limbus, and the game wasnt even in maintenance mode yet. Bunch of revisionist theory haters up in here.

Segments was indeed added before Gaol in Nov 2020
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/57421-November-10-2020-%28JST%29-Version-Update

My bad, was going through edit history on wiki instead of update patch notes. You got me. Segments were so important that no one bothered to make reference to them until mid January 2021 when Gaol was added.

I guess everything in my previous post is invalid now because of that.

Not everything, this is still very valid. Ody was nothing more than a roaming exp party with lustreless mat drops for 6 months and 2 additional months with added segments.

As a bonus, the end goal touch reward wasn't added until May 2021!

"Players can now earn additional mog segments by examining the Otherworldly Vortex in Sheol A, B, or C based on the number of mog segments they have earned during that foray."

Which is why I as asking why aren't the people against limbus as a concept, also against odysseys initial release. If they have forgotten or just skipped that first almost year of odyssey.

I finished off my original post as such:

There is also someone who claims he soloed coffers and aurums by opening chests and coffers with points for better upgrade chances and then the aurum with keys. I found my average geared Tauret THF (2100 job points, malignance and some AF3 pieces) can't gather enough points to open chest + coffer.

The NMs can be soloed by very well geared selected few jobs but they are a significant step up in difficulty. I've soloed Gloios and Taniwha on BLU but Kuk is out of reach so I'd have to pick up a job like NIN and bring it to a pretty high gear level just for that one NM that doesn't even drop anything useful.

Its like you need to do a lengthy thing to do a lengthy thing to be able to do another thing solo at a mediocre level way down the line.


I also think a single multibox is already a pretty significant advantage over soloing.

This is pure speculation on my side. Of course there are others who think the same, but we'll never be able to know wether it's true or false.

It is my personal feeling that they never planned for Gaol since the beginning. Sure, maybe it was some vague possibility (like plentiful others which never came to be for other events) but they didn't plan that far ahead. Initially it was meant as a content focused on UNM upgrades.
They quickly realized that event would've failed to mantain long time interest (i.e. grind) so they attempted to create something different, aimed at static parties with challenging, inventive fights the likes of which FFXI hadn't seen in a long, long time.
The development was planned in 3 steps.
1st step: Sheols. At this stage they didn't know wether or not the event would've expanded and if so in which direction
2nd step: Gaol, up to V15 but with intention to go up, they didn't know how yet
3rd step: Gaol, V20 and V25 were already planned by now.
Despite its several flaws, it's amazing how many good ideas they poured inside Gaol fights and related content. At the same time to me it feels obvious how it wasn't born with Sheols in mind from the beginning, and the way they forcefully tied the two parts together is one of the (small? big?) flaws of the event overall.


I'll take into consideration the last 3 other "big" events to play added in game to make a comparison:

Omen: like 90% of the event was planned and released from the start. Wether or not Ou & special floor were planned and if so vaguely or precisely, I can't really say but I don't feel it matters much, it's a really small part of the event overall. On a hunch it feels to me they probably had somewhat clear ideas though.

Sortie: The first 50% of the event was released immediately, the rest several months after, with Primes following further on. I think everything was clearly planned from the beginning. Maybe some details changed through the course of development but I think they had that plan and that idea of endpoint from the start.

Limbus: I feel like several details weren't completely planned perchance, but I feel they had an idea of where they wanted to go from the beginning.


Again, pure speculation on my side. It's just how it "feels" to me.

And then they added Amplifiers which completely invalidate any grind.

Can't recall but was Dyna-D released all at once or was it zone by zone? Then later releases added wave 3, dyna weapons/necks and then updated further with the rema upgrade mechanic.

Was also lag issues and the shard/armor system was a mess at 1st with not being able to sell but was pretty quickly(relatively) fixed

Everything rolls out in multiple patches

it's a really stupid idea. Everyone hates patch 1 and begrudgingly accepts it by patch 7 but it creates bad vibes leaving it dogshit for 6 months while it gets finished.

They've adopted a tactic of make it a plate of dogshit, but steadily increase the size of the plate so the pile looks smaller.

Cannot say that it is ineffective however. Think how many times you've thought, at least it's gotten better.

I exclusively opened chests with points all the way to MM45. It costs 5+8+aurum coffer points to open one aurum with points.

Cap chest at 5 first. Then coffer at 8. Then gather enough points to open one aurum, save all points till last floor and hope you get aurum.

One run one aurum max and if your first two chests don't spawn an aurum you're sol.

I was inactive at the time, but I believe it was just Sandy first then the other 3 areas

Well, yes and no.
I mean, the way they were probably meaning to make it work, it would have been a noticeable reduction on what was an insane amount of grind.
The way WE players found a way to exploit it... is even better, much better, way way way better than they meant.

I mean, still a grind and honestly not solable for all targets, but still way more manageable, provided you're not thirsting for segments, but if you are then you have other problems to be thinking about, me thinks :p


One by one.
Wave3 was released after that, not sure how long but not too much? Let's check.
Sandy ==> November 2017
Bastok ==> December 2017
Windurst ==> February 2018
Jeuno ==> March 2018
Wave3 ==> July 2018

Pretty confident they planned for all of it together and released/developed it bit by bit

Fair, guess it kept getting added frequently enough i didnt remember it being fragmented beyond w3 and onwards

I'm going through the old notes
VoidShards were EX up until Jeuno's release

what the *** how was anyone upgrading anything

You go back to original dyna and pretend theres structure on lotting but instead ends up with at least 1 lot war. If you mean how did people get enough shards/voids, well everyone loves those stories of taking months to get a rdm hat right?

Though correct me if im wrong but you could still convert the tags, so could still just buy your upgrade iirc

My beef with both is neither is alliance content AND you can't stack entries (like Omen). Leaves very little wiggle room and forces people to form statics and grind it out then get burnt out. I know many people that finally got their prime then quit after, or at least multiple that took a long break after.


You're not going to get a team of people to help others or even go with less-optimal groups when the grind is that long. But I'm biased, I don't like 6-man content, so...

This is basically what I did. IIRC I did:
* Floor 1 Halo + monsters it's in (12 points)
* Another 5 monsters (13 points)
* Chest -> Coffer -> Key the Aurum if it spawns
* Key all the rest of the chests for gillies
* Come back tomorrow and do it again

I did it dualbox, but I had enough extra time to throw keys at the rest of the chests / exit, so I imagine someone could solo and not do the chests.

IIRC I got help from friends in C and they already had floored Aurum costs so they just popped them for me after we farmed segs instead of popping lower tier chests (which is very marginally better segs?), so most of my C Aurums I didn't have to do this for.

I do consider Sortie a good content, I don't hate it. I can talk in hindsight now though, given how "old" the content is.
These are the problems they failed to realize imho:

1) There's too much walking. It's good for the pace of the event, but considering it lasts 1hr once you've been doing it almost daily for a long time, it gets on your nerves

2) I get how they wanted to slow down people obtaining Primes, but considering they put a minimum 6 months wait due to psyches, was it all that necessary to require so much Galli? Especially for the last stage? (which is not a big deal for who does 9bosses runs everyday but it's such a minority among players I don't think it matters)

3) Using the same currency for Empy upgrades AND primes was a bad choice imho. Could've easily solved this by allowing a second method to upgrade using the excess of mats you get regardless (Sapphires, Starstones, you name it) but nope.

4) No KI storing for an event you're supposed to do everyday to even remotely get close to the 6 months period for a weapon is maybe not a big deal, but for an event that lasts 1hr it really builds up on your "stress".


Despite the flaws I mentioned, I think Sortie was a really well thought event with a lot of variety on approaches etc. Thumb up to them.